A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

An eye-opening study  out of Vancouver that clearly shows how much of B.C.'s homelessness problem is about people with mental illness falling through the massive gaps in the health-care system.

A heartfelt plea from the father of a young woman who could lose her group home if "home share" becomes the only option in B.C. for people with mental handicaps.

Mental-health cuts take aim at those unable to fight back Please don’t tell me that the people in charge of services on the Island for people with mental illness really think that it’s us to blame for the sad condition of mental-health services. Dr. Robert Miller, medical director for mental health and addiction services at Vancouver Island Health Authority, wrote in a letter to the editor last week that the reason mental health and addiction services are inadequate is because the public makes that choice. Really? I can’t recall a time when the health-care system has ever consulted Canadians around funding decisions of any kind. I take Miller’s point that our country underspends on mental health services, but I don’t remember a public conversation in which we agreed to that. Miller, who’s also head of psychiatry for VIHA, rightly raises in his letter the fact that Canada spends a smaller proportion of its health-care dollars on mental health and addiction care than other western ...

I've been hearing from lots of concerned family members around B.C. responding to my June 11 column on the major changes afoot for British Columbians with developmental disabilities. The push is on for an end to the group-home model for people with mental handicaps, a change that pleases the families who like the idea of a more independent living situation for their loved ones, but terrifies those who have had bad experiences with private homes (increased isolation, more risk of abuse going undetected, less stable as a "permanent" housing solution, etc). It seems like a good time to post the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled . Take a look at Article 3, which notes that giving people the right to choose what happens to them is a basic principle in the Convention.

Trouble inside VIHA? Check out this intriguing series of letters and opinion pieces from doctors and VIHA directors, all published in the Times Colonist in the past month. I've started with the June 9 editorial that got things rolling, followed by the three letters that have run so far revealing a whole lot of internal dissent about the cuts to mental-health services this past year. I'll be writing about this issue in my column on Friday, June 25. A terrible failure on mental illness Times Colonist (Victoria) Wed Jun 9 2010 A terrible failure on mental illness There is no worry greater than being the parent of a child with a serious mental illness or addiction. Any illness suffered by a family member is, of course, traumatic. But for most ailments and injuries, especially critical ones, there is support and help. If your child has cancer, the health care system provides remarkable care; support services help the family; friends and neighbours pitch in. Parents kno...

B.C. families need to fight for group homes I remember the exact moment I started to look at people with mental handicaps in a completely different way. It was 1985, not long after the province had closed the huge institution for “retarded” people at Tranquille, an old tuberculosis sanatorium outside Kamloops. I was working at a Kamloops newspaper at the time and the closure was big news, so I’d been part of documenting the hope, fear, anger and anticipation that the closure had sparked. Families had been working for long, long lifetimes by then to move things forward for their mentally handicapped children, who were all ages. They had few choices in those years when it came to finding services or schooling for their children in their own home towns, and often had no option but to send their children hundreds of kilometres away to institutions such as Tranquille, Woodlands and Glendale. The families were mostly over the moon at the thought that Tranquille’s closure would allow th...

Lessons from BP tragedy: Trust is not an option As barrel after barrel of oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, poisoning every living creature that comes in contact with it, I feel again a creeping dread at how little we know about the things we say yes to. I know almost nothing about deep-sea oil drilling. And I see now that I have made a terrible error in not knowing more, because one of the greatest environmental disasters of our time is unfolding and all I can do is stand here bewildered at how this can possibly be happening. As with all things I don’t know enough about, I just thought somebody was taking care of things. I thought people with a lot more smarts than me were considering everything carefully and proceeding with the utmost caution, because it’s in nobody’s interest to kill off our oceans. I presumed - and isn’t that just the saddest word? - that a company drilling an oil well reaching 17,000 feet below the surface of the ocean would have had a backup plan for ever...